


Classical Conditioning

by Theta_Waves



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theta_Waves/pseuds/Theta_Waves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing like a good scientific experiment.  And this is nothing like a good scientific experiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The bell of the oven hadn’t even time to finish tolling before it’s door was popped open, letting out a dry fount of air into the empty bakery.  With it the smell of macadamia nuts and white chocolate, a desert-like dessert breeze if you will, before the sheet of perfect little morsels were out and onto the cool stovetop.  From there, it was a short trip to the cooling rack.

Marinette eyed her work with pride as she swept her arm across her forehead, careful not to press the hot oven mitt to her hair.  The warm glow under her ribs that came with a really well made batch of treats made the subsequent clean up seem trivial, and usually boosted her mood to such a place that even the soft slap of her oven mitts on the counter seemed like a satisfying sound.  That being said, she still felt like she was defusing a bomb.

The whole reason she was up after hours and baking white chocolate and macadamia cookies had nothing to do with her parents’ business, and everything to do with psychology.  At least, that’s how she would explain it briefly.

As attentive to her studies as she was her passions, Marinette simply couldn’t bring herself to focus on Monday afternoon’s lesson.  Between the well-known and dreaded two o’clock sluggishness and the absence of a particular interest in the field of psychology, Marinette was much more interested in practicing form sketches and designing clothes.  The models for which would be quite familiar to anyone else in the class.

Marinette paused from her work to gaze at the blonde head of hair in front of her.  To any onlookers, Marinette would just look like a bored teenager in class, whose gaze happened to fall on the boy in the seat in front of her.  But Marinette, and Alya beside her, knew that this was a classic physical manifestation of her own pining for Adrien Agreste, who, unlike Marinette, seemed to be taking studious notes on today’s subject matter from Madame Bustier.

To her credit, Marinette hadn’t been completely neglecting the class.  She was following along loosely enough to know that they were covering a lesson on classical conditioning in this portion of the class, and soaked in some key phrases.  Behaviorism, Pavlov and his dogs, John B. Watson, reinforcement, latent inhibition, higher order conditioning.  Old men with bad beards in the middle of the last century whose experiments included things like how to teach babies to be afraid and how to get dogs to slobber. Nothing particularly useful to Marinette, as it had nothing to do with design, or baking, or figuring out the identity of the mysterious Hawkmoth, or getting Adrien to notice her for that matter.

If it were as simple as feeding him kibble so often as to get him to—

The teenage superhero stopped moving and inadvertently pressed her pencil through the page of her notebook.  Oh Pavlov, you beautiful Russian genius…

The rest of the plan came as naturally as the mischievous smile that spread across her face.  Make some tasty sweets, and feed them to Adrien first thing in the morning when he saw her.  She had spent enough time around him to know that he had a weakness for baked goods.  Soon enough, he’d associate the feeling of a really good bite of chocolate with seeing Marinette’s smiling face.  And wasn’t that really what love is anyway?

With all the grace and confidence usually reserved for her alter-ego, Miss Dupain-Cheng had found a home in the trademark pink box of the bakery for her little sweet tools.  Sorry: the unconditioned stimuli.   The giddiness at the prospect of having a real plan to win Adrien’s affections, even if it was a little devious, had her riding high all the way through the process of washing dishes.  A high that prevented her from even considering the moral questionability of her actions, to say nothing of the nervousness it would cause her.  The thought of even offering Adrien a tissue usually left her on edge.

But even throughout the process of washing and drying her cookware she retained that feeling of excitement.  Even without her spots on, she was in control, she had a plan and she was making it happen. She would sleep well with the prospect of enacting phase two tomorrow, even if only by delaying the moral crisis she would likely go through.

But she was going to enjoy this feeling while it lasted.  Tomorrow, Marinette was going to tackle the human mind in all of it’s predictable glories.

Marinette wished she could go back in time to when altering the human mind seemed like a fun idea.  Baking in the comfort of her own home, excited at the process of a finally requited crush seemed like a distant memory when faced with the heart-stopping terror of an uncertain and all too near future.

Sure, she had made it to school without taking a terrible spill that ruined her cookies, and sure, she was reasonably certain Adrien would be in class today, but she now realized that that had been the least of her worries.  Any second now Adrien would walk in.  And then what would she do? She was going to freeze up without offering him a morning snack! Or even worse, freeze up in the middle of offering it to him, and he would think she’s a freak! Or if by some miracle she offered it to him and he took it, he could eat it and hate it!

Oh god, what if he’s allergic to nuts?  He could die, and it would be all her fault! He’d go into anaphylactic shock and drop dead in front of her, or even worse, he would survive and hate Marinette forever!

“Alya, I can’t do it!”

Marinette’s best friend looked up from her phone to give Marinette a quizzical look in response.

“Do what, girl?”

Marinette, in lieu of words, shook the cookie receptacle in Alya’s face, as if it spoke for itself. It didn’t of course, and Marinette realized this and exhaled the breath she forgot she was holding to answer.

“I can’t go through…” Mari stopped short of blabbing about her master plan.  She couldn’t deal with the embarrassment, nor the endless smirking and ribbing it would earn from her best friend.  At least not yet.  “With offering Adrien a cookie.”

“Oh God, you made cookies?” Alya gave up a soft gasp and had her hand in the box almost faster than the eye could see.  “You can’t just not offer me one first! I mean really, Mari, you can’t…that’s a serious cookie.  God, Marinette how do you do this? I mean beside being born and raised in a bakery. Just gimme one more.”

“Alya,” Marinette admonished, grabbing Alya’s wrist as it snaked it’s way toward the box.  She took a breath and lowered her voice, checking to make sure she wasn’t overheard. “These are for someone special.  You know: A _special_ someone!  Someone who’s specialness puts them near and dear to my heart!”

Alya understood her, probably only by virtue of the fact that anything that made Marinette behave this strangely had something to do with Adrien.  And though Marinette’s endless ridiculousness over their admittedly cute but secretly dorky classmate exasperated her, she put up with it.

“Oh boo.  Is that pretty boy all you think about? You’re really tempting fate here, Mari. When he tastes these you won’t be able to keep him off of you.”

“Well that’s the idea, isn’t it?”  Marinette was glad that baking sweets for her sweet came off as plausible enough.  She dreaded having to explain the complete picture of her plan to anyone, but secretly she was afraid of Alya attempting to meddle.

The last thing she needed was Alya Cesaire’s wily attempts to aid Marinette in brainwashing Adrien.  Well brainwashing might be a little extreme…

The young designer put her head into her hands.  No, she might as well be trying to brainwash him.  Now that she was faced up front with the prospect of trying to alter someone’s behavior, she realized that this was a bit desperate, even for her.  Not only was it desperate, but it was manipulative!

Oh God, she thought manipulation was something reserved for the Bourgeoisie family, yet here she was about to ham-fistedly train a boy to like her.  She couldn’t go through with it.  She _wouldn’t_ go through with it.  She’d just throw out the cookies and that’ll be the end of it.  No, that would be a terrible waste, and look incredibly strange besides.  She’ll just give everyone in the class a cookie, except for Adrien of course—oh no then he would think she hates him! She didn’t have the time to eat them all herself, and her now queasy stomach probably wouldn’t be able to handle it.  Oh! She could just—

“Hey what’s in the box, Marinette? Also: Good morning!”

Marinette snapped from her problem-solving brainstorm to discover that Adrien had long-since arrived in class, and found his seat in front of her like always.

Don’t tell him that it’s cookies.  Say something else, something stupid.  A dead rat, day old bread.  Anything that’ll keep his perfect pianist hands off it.

“Only a fresh batch of Dupain-Cheng secret recipe white chocolate cookies, blondie!”  Alya had beaten Marinette to the punch, apparently unknowing, or uncaring, that Marinette had a change of heart, and was giving Marinette her _‘I got your back, girl’_ wink, even as Marinette returned it with her _‘Why would you do that?!’_ rabbit-caught-in-a-snare look of panic.

“Wow, secret recipe! What’s the occasion, Mari?” Adrien asked, seemingly unaware of Marinette’s split-second meltdown.

“Oh, you know, nothing special, except you.  That is, there’s a special client! Just, um… doing a delivery during lunch! Special clients and all that, you know how it is!” As the words tumbled out, Marinette knew that even for her she was fumbling, and no amount of immediate shutting up would save her.

“I think I do, yeah.  Well, I’m sure they’ll love them!” Adrien gave her a quick thumbs up, oh god how cute is that, and turned back to his desk, trying not to look a little let down.

Oh no, Marinette thought to herself.  He looked like a kicked puppy.  I wish he didn’t look cute when he’s sad.  Well… she couldn’t let him go hungry, could she?

“Of course, I did make a few extras!”

The speed with which Adrien turned back toward her confirmed it: The boy really wanted a cookie or two.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to mess with business or anything.”

“No way! I made extras just in case.” Marinette couldn’t help but smile at Adrien, blissfully unaware that his kicked-puppy look had jumped right to puppy who was told he’s going for a walk. She had to pretend to be focusing on picking the perfect cookie for him just so he wouldn’t notice her grin. “Go on, take it.”

Adrien looked from the cookie to Marinette before taking it, the half-second brush of their fingers electric to the girl.  Now all she could do was wait to see his reaction.  As Adrien took the first bite she bit her lip in anticipation.

His shoulders sank with his chest and he closed his eyes. For a moment Marinette was afraid he hated it, only to be proven wrong by Adrien putting the rest of the treat into his mouth.

“Marinette… how,” he split his own sentence in half to suck some melted chocolate off of his thumb before continuing, “do you do that?!”

Marinette, trying not to melt herself, asked right back,  “How do you know _I_ made it?”  Even though she wanted to ask: “How do you make eating look so handsome?”

Adrien considered it for a moment, either to collect his thoughts or find the words.

“Because you watched me eat it, of course.  You take pride in your work.  And it shows: That was really something special Marinette.” He flashed his smile at her once more, apparently satisfied with his answer. “Thank you.”

Marinette could do nothing but nod at him.  Even if she could find the words to respond to that, she wouldn’t have been able to spit them out.  Especially not when it took every ounce of self-control not to grab him by that stupidly well-starched collar and plant a kiss on him.

She was spared the embarrassment of him noticing her staring by the morning bell, accompanied by Madame Bustier arriving in class to start the day. Even with Alya beaming her knowing grin at Marinette, the girl had her notebook open and was writing in it as if it were a normal morning.  Of course, she wasn’t taking notes, she was planning a week’s worth of morning confectionaries.


	2. Chapter 2

“Alya, you’re going to be ashamed of me.  I’ve done a really bad thing and become a really bad person.  I might have to run away and start a new life with a new name.  Maybe in Sweden, I haven’t decided yet.”

“Marinette if you’re about to tell me that you finally murdered Chloe, I don’t know if there’s a judge on this planet that would convict you.”

“What?” Confusion, shockingly, had been the thing that broke Marinette out of her panic fantasy. “No I didn’t murder Chloe!  I mean not yet anyway.  I’ll remember what you said about that though.  You can be my character witness.”

“Do you remember the cookies I brought to school this morning?”

“I’ll have a hard time forgetting them.  Do you have any extra? Or at least the recipe?” he asked.

“Alya please!  This is important! Do you remember yesterday’s psychology lesson?  Of course you do you’re brilliant.  Well concerning the bit about Pavlov’s dogs I guess I sort of… took it to heart.”

Marinette hoisted herself to sit on the counter and used her spare hand to cover the shame in her face.  Even though there was silence from the other end of the line, Marinette could hear the expression on Alya’s face, and knew that the only term to describe her smile would be 'shit-eating.'

“Marinette, you are… so bad.  And I love it.  And I fully support you right now.”

“What?! But this is so… messed up!”

“Marinette, listen to me.  I love you, but you have been getting nowhere fast in winning Adrien over.  It doesn’t help that Adrien is as dumb as a bag of rocks sometimes, either.”

Marinette ignored the need to defend her love’s honor from the bag of rocks and decided to let Alya try to talk her into it.

“So you don’t think that what I’m doing is wrong?”

“Of course I do.  It’s wrong on so many levels.” She said matter of factly.

“But then-”

“Look, until you can overcome your nerves, or Adrien ceases to be the most oblivious person on the planet, this might be the best option.  Besides, you’re not really controlling his behavior or anything!  It’s more like… giving him a little push.”

“Recreating a famed psychological experiment using a human subject for personal gain…”

“Yes, just like I said: A little push!”

“Well I guess that makes… some sort of sense,”  She conceded

“Of course it does, darling.  Now don’t you have some baking to do?”

Quarter past eight.  Calculated as the perfect time to arrive at school, to be early enough to catch Adrien before the bell rang at half-past.  Of course with an hour of baking time added onto her morning routine, Marinette had been up since six thirty. But the precious cargo in her little pink box to be delivered to her own precious cargo would ensure it was all worth it.

And as always, Alya arrived before Adrien; likely earlier than usual so that she could confer with Marinette about her devious plan, and to see it in action once again.  This time, however, she would have the pleasure of knowing what her best friend had in store.

“Marinette, you look exhausted!  You aren’t losing sleep over this, are you?”

“Who me?” Marinette failed to suppress a yawn, and figured that as long as she was yawning that she might as well give a nice stretch as well. “No I was up early.  I didn’t want the raspberry brie pockets to get clammy overnight.  And fresher is always better anyways.”

“Damn, Mari, you’re really committed.  If this doesn’t get him to fall for you I don’t know what will.” 

“Thanks, Alya.  That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”  Upon noticing Alya’s hand inching closer to the box of goodies, Marinette pulled it to her chest, “And no, you can’t have one! I can’t have you going and falling in love with me.”

“Mari, my sweet if you’d only give me the chance you’d be so surprised.”

“Surprised that you’d date me just for my baking!”

Alya put her hand over her heart and gave her best impression of insult before turning her nose up, and pulling out her hand mirror to reapply her eyeliner, even though it already looked great.  Mari briefly considered asking Alya to apply hers; she was sure that her six AM self didn’t have the steadiest hand, but decided to leave it be.  She didn’t have the energy to hold her head up and stay still.

Until Adrien walked in of course! Though he was side by side with Nino and following a small throng of their fellow classmates, it was as if he was alone in her mind, and of course, the sole reason for the sudden uptick in energy.

“I’m telling you, Nino, it’s worth pursuing.  You’ll regret it much more if you do nothing.”

“No way.  I’d be wasting the money on what it costs to burn it onto a CD and buy the postage.  It’s a pipe dream.”

“Yeah so? You’re gonna let the cost of postage ruin your pipe dream?”  Adrien apparently didn’t want to leave it alone.  All Marinette could glean was that it was about one of Nino’s mixtapes. 

But as they set their bags down and assumed the morning position of sitting, Nino would have the last word.

“Dude… you’re my best friend so I’m going to be the one to tell you this.  Because you’re my bro.  Postage isn’t expensive, but I’m pretty sure in the general scheme of things you don’t exactly have the same view of ‘expensive’ as the rest of us.”

Adrien looked at Nino briefly like he'd gone through a great revelation.  Apparently he sometimes forgot he was loaded.

Marinette didn’t put much stock in that, she was too busy fawning over the fact that Adrien was encouraging his best friend to chase his dreams.  How sweet was that? Adrien had probably offered to take one of Nino’s tapes to some famous producer, the big sweetheart, only to be stopped by Nino’s pride.

Adrien turned to give his customary morning greeting to Marinette and Alya.  Nino declined to partake in the daily ritual, either stewing in thoughts of a music career, or embarrassed by both his past crush on Marinette and his current one on Alya.

“Another delivery, Marinette? Someone in Paris must really like their desserts at lunchtime.”

Marinette glanced at Alya for one last bit of moral support, or in this case amoral support, only to see that Alya was apparently leaving the words to Marinette.

“Well it’s not a dessert so much as a sweet snack.  But it’s savory too, even though I wouldn’t recommend it for breakfast.  Or lunch for that matter.  I’d actually wait to eat it until after dinner in most cases.”  Marinette twirled a pencil in her hands instead of gnawing at it.  Pencil gnawing tended to impede speech.  Adrien squinted a bit in confusion.

“Isn’t… that what a dessert is?”

Oh you’re good, Agreste.

“Clever, but you don’t think like a chef.”  Marinette let this hang for a second and watched Adrien with poorly concealed puppy-dog eyes as he chuckled.  She’d probably have sat like that forever if Adrien didn’t look away or if she didn’t remember that Adrien was much too polite to ask for a sample from someone else’s delivery.

“And I have another extra! You know, a baker’s dozen and all that.”

Adrien swiveled around to her again with his eyes lit up.  Maybe this whole thing was taking effect quicker than she expected.

“Marinette, you’re a saint!”

Saint Mari only dipped her head in thanks as she fished out a dessert for Adrien.

“A raspberry and brie pocket.  Hope you like it!”

“Of course I’ll like it! It’s…” Adrien didn’t even wait to finish his sentence before popping the entire pouch of flaky crust into his mouth.  His words trailed off as he chewed, culminating in a silent slump deep into his chair.

Oh no. Oh no.  Was he dying? He was having an allergic reaction! This was what anaphylactic shock must look like!

In the nanosecond before Marinette launched herself from her chair to give Adrien the Heimlich, he spoke up, saving Marinette from a restraining order.

“Marinette, this  _ cannot _ be legal.”

“When you grow up in a bakery, everything is legal.”  Alya and Nino both looked at her with the same expression of puzzlement that Marinette was looking at herself with. When you grow up in a bakery everything is legal? That was the dumbest thing she could possibly have said, but it just came out!

Adrien found it charming enough to laugh at, and gave Marinette another nod of thanks.

Instead of replying with another stupid line, Marinette found herself shut up by the morning bell, an interruption she was thankful for. She was about to throw her head down on the desk and wallow in a mix of shame at her own stupidity, as well as the excitement at the workings of her plot before Alya put her hand on Mari’s wrist.

“In all seriousness, you’ve got to let me have one of whatever you’re making tomorrow.  Or I might cry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not saying I condone using sweets to win someone's affections, but if it works out for you, let everyone know in the comments section. You can also use the comments section to tell me what you think of the chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

Wake up, bake, go to school.  See Adrien, still her beating heart, offer him a treat, watch him eat it, swoon, fail to pay attention in class, go home.

Repeat.

Blueberry tarts, mini lemon meringue pies, hazelnut croissants, use the weekend to rest and acquire more ingredients and new recipes.

Repeat for another week.

It took Marinette all the patience she had, and almost as much flour, to wait two more weeks to put old Ivan to the test.  Everyday the process of offering Adrien his morning snack and accepting his praise came a little bit easier.  So much so that it frequently even evolved into a conversation before the bell.  Adrien liked dark chocolate, as well as oranges, but didn’t get to eat a lot of sugary things, because his modeling contract bade him keep a certain weight.  Truth be told she felt sorry for him. 

Even though he was good at keeping a smile up, Marinette could tell that it made him sad to think that he had missed out on years of getting to eat things that hit his brain’s pleasure center just right, and that they had been replaced with years of eating controlled and unsatisfying diets.  To think of all the ice cream he had missed out during heat waves, or eggnog during the winter…  Thinking about Christmas without being able to eat christmas cookies gave Marinette chills.  These were the times that Marinette felt guilty about doing this so that he would fall for her, rather than for his happiness on the whole.

So after consulting with Alya on the phone the night before, they both decided that today was the day.

Now all she had to do was wait and hope, and literally twiddle her thumbs at her desk.  She read up on classical conditioning and found two things she could look for as a sign that she’d been successful.  Adrien would see her and one of two things would happen.  His smile would take on a quality of soul-satisfied contentment, or his stomach would gurgle or otherwise signal his hunger.

Or he would get down on one knee and profess his undying love for her.  This third option was astronomically improbable, but she had to dream.

As she was tempted to lose herself in this dream, as she was wont to do, the door to the classroom opened.  As her heart jumped to her throat, she grabbed Alya’s hand under the desk and clutched it for dear life, to the shock of her bespectacled best friend.

He walked in.

“Morning, Marinette!”

He said good morning to her.

In return she gave a short wave and smiled behind it, a smile that was more akin to a cringe.  All she had to do now was wait.  In fact all she  _ could _ do was wait. Wait for Adrien to take his seat, as he was doing now, and wait for him to wonder why there was no food today.

He had to just be too polite to ask, right? He just didn’t want to seem entitled so he would suffer silently.  No, he would notice something was different soon enough!

Except after five painful minutes, Adrien said nothing, and Alya finally wrenched her hand away to massage circulation back into it.  Marinette just watched the back of her target’s head, willing him to do something, anything, other than sit there.

And sit there silently.

Marinette reached her breaking point and turned to Alya, gesturing silently through her pained face

_ What is he doing?! _

In response there was only Alya’s identical body language replying:   _ How should I know? _

Marinette waited another minute for Adrien to give her a sign, but she saw nothing. That was it.  It didn’t work.  She gave Alya a look that signaled defeat, and both of them deflated.  Why in the world didn’t it work? Was it because she used different foods every day? Did the weekends disturb the pattern of stimuli? Was Adrien simply too strong-willed for there to be any effect?

In the end, Marinette didn’t care to know the reason.  She just wanted to stew in her guilt, and her grief that she had manipulated the world’s sweetest boy for nothing.  She put her head down on the desk and let the morning bell that tolled for the start of class instead condemn her to a morning of misery. 

Most mornings she just pined over Adrien anyway, but this morning was different.  Her romantic fantasies were laced with hope for the future, but today they were poisoned by her guilt.  Today her dreams weren’t of what might be, but what might have been.  But now ever her fantasies couldn’t retain their old overtones of joy.  How could she dream of a happy life together when she knew she had tried to bend him to her will?  Knowing that she had gone behind his back to try and alter his behavior? She felt filthy, and half expected herself to see the telltale black butterfly of akumatization.

Instead she just wallowed in self-pity throughout math.  All she wanted was to be rid of the thoughts of her failed plan of nearly a month, but she just couldn’t empty her mind of it, especially when the alternative was to pay attention to math.

So imagine her shock when she realized how quickly time had passed when she saw Madame Bustier begin ending the lesson for lunch break.  As if she could eat.  Worse than that, she felt she might throw up.

But Adrien would eat, with his perfect head of hair and well-brushed teeth.  But he might miss what it’s like to have something cooked with love.  And if he finally asked Marinette if she had any extras for him, she’d have to look him in the face and tell him no.  The poor boy must be starving.

What else would she expect when the bell for lunch rang and kids began filing out the door, Adrien among them, telling Nino that he’s starving and wants to find a bakery.

What?

“Oh God, Marinette I’m so sorry it didn’t work-“ Alya began once the coast was clear.

“No, shushushush! Did you hear him?” Marinette had physically silenced her best friend with a finger on the lips.  Now that their peers had gone to lunch, the girls could discuss prior events freely.

“Girl, what are you talking about?”

“Just as he left! He said he wanted to go to a bakery, that he was hungry…”

Had Marinette not been looking mystifiedly toward the door, she’d have seen the growing concern on Alya’s face.

“Mari, are you sure?”

“I’m pretty confident in my hearing, Alya!  The conditioning worked… sort of.  But why did… it’s lunchtime.  Why now?”  Marinette chewed on her pencil like it was a block of wood in a lathe, her mind filing through the possibilities.

“Maybe he’s hungry because it’s lunchtime?”  Alya was breaking out the kid gloves again: The demeanor she adopted when she felt like Marinette was becoming increasingly unhinged over this boy.

“But he said he wanted to go to a bakery. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon!  Why in the world would he want to go to a bakery if not because what I did worked!”

“Oh jeez… Marinette, come on, let’s eat lunch.  You can mumble your conspiracy theories while we eat.  I’m hungry myself and not because you’ve brainwashed me.”

* * *

 

It just didn’t add up.

Even hours later, just minutes before school let out for the day, Marinette was single-mindedly trying to figure out what had gone wrong in her experiment. She had a conditioned stimulus, herself, and an unconditioned stimulus, her delicious confectionaries.  She made sure that Adrien was exposed to them at the same time, and reliably, for about three weeks!

So why did he only show signs of being affected by it hours after he should have?

Did she miss something? She admittedly didn’t pay very much attention to the lesson when it was being taught but she felt like she had soaked up the jist of it through osmosis.  By all rights, it should have worked just like it did for Pavlov and his dogs.  So why was Adrien just sitting there, blissfully unaware like some painfully cute blonde kitten?

She scrunched up her face and stared at the back of Adrien’s head some more, determined somehow to make his brain talk to her.

Then the four o’clock bell sounded, and like clockwork everyone began shuffling papers and depositing notebooks into bags and getting the hell out the door at varying speeds.  A signal they’d all become accustomed to, day in and day out.

The penny dropped along with Marinette’s bag on the floor.  As everyone else started making their ways toward home, Marinette snatched Alya’s bag and opened it up on the table, sifting through the contents for her notebook.

“Marinette, what- Hey, what are you doing?!”

Marinette looked up at her with a sheepish grin, only then realizing how rude she was being. 

“Sorry, I just need to borrow your notes for a minute.  I think I missed a little…” She didn’t have the rest of that thought planned out in her head, so she let herself trail off and leaf through the notes instead.  For someone so organized, Alya had some messy notes, complete with dog-eared pages and doodles galore.

Today was Friday, so the Monday before this Monday would have been… here it was!

Notes on behaviorism, John B. Watson, Pavlov, conditioning, experiments and stimuli…

“Marinette, just what the hell are you looking for?”

Marinette felt her chest deflate instead of answering.  She sighed in defeat and pinched the bridge of her nose, and raised the notebook to read from.

“‘Backward conditioning: Unlike usual procedures in classical conditioning, backward conditioning is a procedure where a conditioned stimulus immediately follows an unconditioned stimulus.’”

Judging by the expectant look on her face, Alya had yet to grasp Marinette’s meaning.

“In backward conditioning, the reward comes before what you’re trying to associate it with. Adrien associates reward with something alright, just not with me.  He learned to associate it with a different reliable, unconditioned stimulus.” Marinette snapped the notebook shut and deposited it safely back in the bag where it belonged, before zipping it up to allow Marinette to attend to her own dropped school supplies. 

Alya was still unsatisfied.

“But what did he learn to associate tasty food with?”

“Well how do you know that school is over and you should go home every day without fail?”

The transformation from Alya’s expression from befuddlement to revelation didn’t just show in  her face; the falling open of the jaw, and lowering of her eyebrows, but in the tilt of her head and the dropping of her shoulders.

“Oh, Mari, baby I’m so sorry.  Maybe we can try it again! That’s how science works right? You take what you found out from your failure and you do better, right?”

Marinette nodded as she shouldered her bag.

“No, I don’t think I was cut out to be a scientist.  I think I’ll stick to chasing this boy the old fashioned way, even if I’m going nowhere fast.”

Alya drew Marinette in for a hug.

“Want me to walk you home?”

She thought about it.  Alya knew how to make her laugh, and Marinette would definitely feel better by the time she was home.  But she still had a bit of wallowing to do.

“Nah.  But I’ll see you tomorrow, ‘kay?”

Alya smiled sadly at her best friend before leaving.  If anybody deserved a free pass to get a boy to fall for her through devious doings, it was Marinette.

After a minute of gathering her things, her thoughts, and resolving to take better notes in class, Marinette knew she had to brave the streets of Paris and go home, and that much sooner face another day of staring at Adrien’s perfect cowlick  and wishing she had some mechanism by which to not be such a hopeless wreck about it.

So she walked out, with her head held figuratively high, but actually looking at her feet, so that as soon as she stepped into the hall she walked into Adrien, and stumbled forward so that she bumped her skull into his chest and stepped on his feet.

“Adrien, Jesus!”

“My bad, Marinette! Really, my bad, really…”

After all their limbs were untangled and centers of balance restored, and Adrien had helped her up with his hands on her shoulders, to which she silently thought,  _ please don’t let go _ , both could do nothing but cough awkwardly.

“Do you always hang out right outside the door after class, Agreste?”

“No, I was sort of hoping to ask for your help.”  Adrien had his head bowed slightly and had his hand on the back of his neck.  Why did he have to do that.  It was unfairly distracting.

“My help?” She tipped her head to look at him, not quite believing it or understanding.

“Yeah I just… well, I was noticing these past couple of weeks how nice you are about sharing your desserts with me, and how tasty they are,” suddenly he put his hands out in front of him, palms up in a placating gesture with a scared look on his face, “not that I didn’t know any of that before! I was just hoping that you could lend me some of your expertise.”

“Go on.”

“This might shock you, Marinette, but I’ve never learned how to cook anything.  Everything I’ve ever eaten at home has been made for me.  They don’t even let me pour the cereal myself!  But I  _ want _ to learn to make things.  And at this point I doubt I’ll ever be able to perform magic with an oven like you…”

He had no idea what to do with his hands.  They were in his pockets now, with his shoulders up to frame his now beet-red face as he bounced on the balls of his feet.

“But it’d be nice to learn how to create  _ something _ .  Even if it’s just a cupcake.  I know your birthday is coming up, after all.”

Marinette wanted to say a hundred thousand things.  That he could bake  _ her _ like a soufflé any day of the year, even though that made no sense outside of her mind.  That she’d spend everyday of her life teaching him how to bake and feeding him if it made him smile.  That it was so cute when he was bashful like this.  That you don’t make a singular cupcake, you make a batch of them.

She wanted to pull him into a hug, among other things.  She settled for crossing her arms with a smirk.

“Are you doing anything this evening?”

Adrien seemed to relax.  His shoulders fell, his smile opened up a bit and showed around the corners of his eyes.  Jesus, Agreste you really were born to be a model.

“No.  Nothing I’d feel guilty about cancelling.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolutely not how classical conditioning works. I butchered an old psychology lesson for the sake of a story about a children's show.
> 
> Edited by the amazing Doritosenpai, and idea by the amazing teammiraculous


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